PMP Process — Managing Technical Aspects Practice Question
Your project is using a Kanban approach. The team's lead time has increased over the last two weeks, and work items are piling up in the 'In Progress' column. What is the BEST action for the project manager to take?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Kanban with Scrum or traditional project management, and choose to add resources or work overtime (options C or D) because they think 'more capacity' solves the problem, when in reality Kanban's core mechanism is limiting WIP to improve flow.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Reduce the number of work items allowed in the 'In Progress' column (WIP limit)
In Kanban, the primary lever to address flow issues like increased lead time and work piling up in 'In Progress' is to reduce the WIP limit. This forces the team to finish existing work before pulling new items, directly addressing the bottleneck and reducing cycle time. Increasing priority, adding people, or working overtime are classic push-system responses that violate Kanban's pull-based, flow-optimization principles.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the priority of all items in the backlog
Why it's wrong here
If all items in the backlog are assigned maximum priority, the system effectively has no priority, as there is no differentiation to guide the team's focus. This approach fails to identify or alleviate specific bottlenecks causing increased lead time, leading to continued context switching and an inability to improve the flow of work through the system. It does not provide actionable guidance for improving efficiency.
- ✓
Reduce the number of work items allowed in the 'In Progress' column (WIP limit)
Why this is correct
Reducing the Work In Progress (WIP) limit is a fundamental Kanban practice designed to improve flow and decrease lead time. By restricting the number of items concurrently in progress, the team is compelled to focus on completing existing tasks before pulling new ones, thereby reducing multitasking and context switching. This action helps to quickly expose bottlenecks in the workflow, allowing for targeted process improvements and a more predictable delivery rate.
- ✗
Add more team members to the project to increase capacity
Why it's wrong here
Adding more team members to a project experiencing increased lead time often exacerbates the problem rather than solving it, especially if the issue stems from process inefficiencies or bottlenecks. This approach can increase communication overhead and coordination costs, potentially slowing down existing team members without addressing the root causes of the delay. It fails to improve the flow of work through the existing system, which is the primary concern in a Kanban environment.
- ✗
Ask the team to work overtime to clear the backlog
Why it's wrong here
Relying on overtime to address increased lead time is a short-sighted and unsustainable solution that masks underlying systemic issues within the Kanban process. While it might offer temporary relief, prolonged overtime leads to team burnout, decreased morale, increased errors, and ultimately a reduction in long-term productivity and quality. This approach does not foster continuous improvement or address the root causes of inefficient flow.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 800 original PMP practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PMP practice question is part of Courseiva's free PMI certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PMP exam.